So a few months back we made a BLE Feather Lamp using an Adafruit Feather 32u4 BLE, a 24x NeoPixel ring and a 3D printed case to make a simple desktop lamp – It’s a pretty neat desk ornament but, it really doesn’t do much.
Limor “Ladyada” thought it’d be really cool if it actually displayed something useful- Like, how about showing the weather? With color!
Weather Reactive Pixels
This project uses an Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 WiFi and NeoPixels to make an IoT weather device.
The Arduino sketch pulls weather forecast data from the Yahoo Weather API and displays animations on NeoPixel LEDs.
Phil Burgess wrote some great NeoPixel animation code for each weather condition. There’s quite a few of them and they change depending on wether it’s day or night. Ladyada tied them together and wrote the arduino sketch for the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266.
If you’re interested in the code, it’s up on github. I put together a guide for this project if you’re interested in building one. Although, the 3D printed case makes it look and feel like a polished product, it’s totally optional.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!